PARIS, FRANCE

Country:  Canada

Year:  1993

Time: 111 mins

Deliriously paced and entertainingly saturated with numerous and inventively diverse sexual couplings, this Canadian tale of mid-life crisis, regret, longing and sexual repression is anything but your standard melodrama. Set in Toronto, the story involves the three owners of a publishing company: a married couple, Lucy and Michael, and their business partner, William. The stability of their lives is thrown into an emotional maelstrom with the arrival of Sloan, a former boxer turned writer, whose first book (on a serial killer) is about to be published.

The hunky and frequently naked Sloan immediately gets in over his head with the sexually ravenous and intellectually frustrated Lucy, who longs to recreate her S&M-filled days in Paris in years gone by.

But he soon goes from her sex-soaked bed to the bed of the openly gay William. Sloan's complex sexual needs soon lead to confusion: is he a gay top man or a straight bottom boy (with Lucy administering the half-nelsons and whip-snapping)?

All the while, the befuddled Michael is slowly going crazy until a surprising sexual ending sets him on a new course.

Beyond the steamy sex scenes and the characters' ranting about poetry, commitment and "Paris", is the uninhibited notion of exploring all of one's many sexual needs. Interestingly, while the three straight/bi characters are bed-jumping, the monogamous and sexaully sane character is gay William.